Andrew Dismore: I have been looking at the explanatory notes. I assume from what my right hon. Friend said that they provide a reasonable guide to what we are dealing with in Northern Ireland. I am particularly concerned about an offence under section 33(1)(a) in respect of the duties of employees under section 7 of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. I do not know the exact equivalent in Northern Ireland, but no doubt my right hon. Friend will be able to tell me where it fits into the 1978 order. A breach of a duty under section 7 carries quite significant penalties under my hon. Friend's proposals for Northern Ireland, but is it fair to impose on conviction such high penalties on employees who have only been doing their job, albeit negligently or recklessly, as on neglectful employers who have the responsibility to make profits?

Keith Hill: No, I want to make progress, if my hon. Friend will allow me.
	Amendment No. 1 amends the 1978 order by including the new schedule of offences, which is called schedule 3A in both the order and the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. Amendments Nos. 2 and 4 are consequential amendments. Amendment No. 3 deals with the making and amending of regulations under the amended order . Amendment No. 5 stipulates that where the Bill amends an Act or order that does not extend to the whole United Kingdom, that amendment has the same, more limited extent; in other words, it qualifies, where necessary, the basic proposition that the Bill extends to the whole United Kingdom. Amendment No. 6 is a consequential amendment.
	Amendments Nos. 7 to 10 make changes for Northern Ireland that correspond to the amendments in the Bill to sections 40(9)(d) and 43 of the Explosives Act 1875. Amendment No. 11 brings into effect amendments to article 17 of the 1978 order on health and safety regulations and article 39 of the same order on remedy and forfeiture. The amendment to article 17 will omit a specified penalty in respect of an offence under the Offshore, and Pipelines, Safety (Northern Ireland) Order 1992—to be precise, that contained in article 17(6)(e)—because in future any such penalty will be provided for in new schedule 3A. The amendment to article 39 will insert a new paragraph that will clarify the application of article 39(4), which would otherwise be incomplete following the proposed repeal of article 31(5). Both those changes, made by amendment No. 11, duplicate the amendments to the equivalent provisions for Great Britain, which are in sections 15 and 42 of the 1974 Act.
	Amendment No. 12 makes an equivalent change to the Activity Centres (Young Persons' Safety) (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 to that made to the Activity Centres (Young Persons' Safety) Act 1995 under schedule 2 of the Bill. Amendments Nos. 13 and 14 are consequential. Finally, amendment No. 15 repeals article 6 of the Offshore, and Pipelines, Safety (Northern Ireland) Order 1992, which corresponds to section 4 of the Offshore Safety Act 1992, which is repealed as a consequence of the provisions that are to be introduced by the Bill.

Keith Hill: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
	I do not wish to detain the House with a lengthy recital of the virtues of this short Bill. It has met with a large degree of consensus, for which I am most grateful. As a consequence, in the course of our exchanges on Second Reading and in Committee, I sense that its merits have been sufficiently adumbrated. Nevertheless, in one respect—in relation to an undertaking that I made in Committee—I need to bring the House up to date with the approach that I made to the Sentencing Guidelines Council in connection with the Bill. In that context, and in anticipation of possible debate elsewhere, I would like to make a final attempt at responding to what I take to be the single outstanding reservation about the Bill—the CBI's continuing objection to the extension of the option of imprisonment for most health and safety offences and their prosecution in the lower courts.
	Let me begin by acknowledging and welcoming the CBI's support for the principle behind the Bill, which is to bring financial penalties for breaches of specific duties to safeguard health and safety in line with general duties, and to bring the financial penalty framework for health and safety offences in line with other offences. On the mode of trial, I am also grateful for the CBI's support for the Bill's provision to make two offences relating to the powers of inspectors, under section 20 of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, either way offences.
	What are the reasons, therefore, for the CBI's opposition to the option of imprisonment for most offences? It seems to me that there are various arguments, but I hope that the following is a fair summary of its opposition. First, the CBI is opposed because imprisonment applies to individuals, and health and safety offences are rarely the fault of one individual. Secondly, it is opposed because it believes that neither the protocols of the enforcement authorities nor existing sentencing guidelines provide sufficient safeguards to ensure proportionality. Thirdly, it is opposed because it says that the protocols or the pressure of publicity often encourage a rather arbitrary choice of whom to prosecute. Fourthly, it suspects that the wider availability of imprisonment will raise the stakes and encourage more challenges to prosecution. Fifthly, and finally, it takes the view that such cases should be heard only in the higher courts.
	Perhaps, I may deal with those arguments in reverse order, and begin by pointing out that the option of a custodial sentence imposed by the lower courts has been available since 1974 for failing to comply with an improvement or prohibition notice, or with a court remedy order, and for a number of offshore offences under the Act since 1992. In addition, imprisonment is widely available under other regulatory legislation, including the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Water Resources Act 1991 and the Food Safety Act 1990. Given that those arrangements seem to have worked well and without objection for many years, it seems unreasonable for the CBI to challenge the principle now.
	On the other hand, the wider availability of the option of imprisonment in both higher and lower courts may lead to more challenges to prosecutions. Who knows? It is a matter of speculation, but I shall make two points on that. First, the availability of higher fines and custodial sentences in the lower courts ought to relieve pressure on the Crown courts and therefore make for speedier and more efficient justice overall. Secondly, the scope for challenge on the part of the accused depends in large measure on the strength of the prosecutions brought by the enforcing authority. The Health and Safety Executive for Great Britain has a successful conviction rate of more than 95 per cent. and the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland's rate is, as I have said, 100 per cent., so the scope for challenge would seem to be strictly limited. Those extraordinary statistics must be good evidence of the very high quality of the prosecutions brought by the HSE and they serve to undermine the CBI's suggestion that the cases brought by the HSE tend to be either arbitrary or not proportionate.
	In Committee, I described the very strict guidelines applied by the HSE in its approach to the prosecution of health and safety offences, and I shall not detain the House by rehearsing the details of the commission's enforcement policy statement now, save to make three points. First, proportionality, which means relating enforcement action to risk, is the primary consideration in the bringing of any case under health and safety legislation. Secondly, the guidelines are even more rigorous and detailed in the standards of proof they say should be sought in the prosecution of individuals. Thirdly, it should be remembered that not only health and safety inspectors, but the courts exercise strict criteria in the approach to custodial sentences. The Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 stipulates that a court may not pass a custodial sentence unless it is of the opinion that the offence or the combination of the offence and others associated with it was so serious that only such a sentence could be justified.
	So, the standards of proof required of both the inspectorate and the courts in the pursuit of custodial sentences are very high, which makes it unlikely that imprisonment will be a frequent sentence in health and safety cases. There is also another reason for that. The CBI is right to say that health and safety offences are rarely the fault of one individual; for the most part they are the result of a combination or sequence of actions or inactions, and a negligent culture. So, there is a very low probability, in any circumstances, of the imprisonment of individuals. That will occur only in such serious cases as are likely to cause public outrage, as the regulatory impact assessment puts it. We think that under the new provisions of this Bill the rate of imprisonment could rise from three or four a year to six to eight.
	Nevertheless, I recognise the concern expressed about the extension of the option of imprisonment in the Bill, which is why I undertook in Committee to approach the Sentencing Guidelines Council with a view to its issuing fresh guidelines to the courts in response to the Bill's new provisions. I have approached the SGC, in the form of a letter dated 3 June 2008 to its chairman, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. As I gave a specific undertaking to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) to do so, I shall read it into the parliamentary record: It stated:
	"Dear Lord Phillips,
	I am contacting you to bring to the attention of the Sentencing Guidelines Council my Private Members Bill—the Health and Safety (Offences) Bill 2007-08—which has its report stage and third reading in the House of Commons on Friday June 13.
	This Bill would amend Section 33 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. In particular, it would:
	Raise the maximum fine which may be imposed by the lower courts to £20,000 for most offences
	Make a prison sentence an option for most health and safety offences in lower and higher courts
	Make certain offences that can currently only go to trial in lower courts, triable in either the lower or higher courts.
	In working to ensure that the Bill has a successful passage through both Houses, I have met with a range of interested parties, including Government officials, MPs from all sides of the House, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, the Health and Safety Executive and the Engineering Employers Federation. In particular, the EEF, while supporting the principles of the Bill, raised concerns over the potential application of the Bill. I therefore undertook to contact the Sentencing Guidelines Council to ensure that the courts have the right guidance to help them to respond proportionately to the new health and safety offences.
	I note that you have recently issued revised Magistrates' Court Sentencing Guidelines, to be implemented on 4th August 2008. I also note that you are minded to do further work on environmental and regulatory offences when you come to review your work programme for 2008-09. It is clear that if my Bill becomes law, the Sentencing Guidelines Council will need to produce new guidelines based on these penalties, as both the current and proposed guidance will be out of date and inappropriate. I am also aware that the revised guidelines have sparked concern from both the HSE and the Office of Rail Regulation, in that the 'slimmed down' guidelines risk undoing the previous helpful guidance on adopting a proportionate approach that appeared in the earlier version of the guidelines.
	I therefore believe it would be extremely timely if the council were, as a matter of priority, to draft new and improved guidelines in this area that take into account the provisions in the Bill and the concerns of the EEF, the CBI, the HSE and the Office of Rail Regulation. I would be happy to meet with you to discuss this matter further. In the meantime, please find enclosed further details of my Bill."
	Should the Bill become law, I trust that a consultation on the new sentencing guidelines will ensue, and I shall work to ensure that all interested parties are involved in that consultation.
	Let me draw my remarks to a close by expressing my thanks to the organisations and individuals who have helped me in the passage of this Bill. First and foremost, I thank the Health and Safety Executive here in London and the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians and the Engineering Employers Federation. I thank also the Ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions—the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), and my noble Friend Lord McKenzie of Luton—and their officials for their stalwart support throughout the process.
	I offer particular thanks to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, who speaks from the Opposition Front Bench, for his enlightened and generous support, for lending his name—others did so too—to the Northern Ireland amendments, and for his advocacy of an appropriate level of publicity for, and a campaign on, the new provisions of the Bill should it be enacted. Again, I should like to thank my assistant, Joe Moll, for doing most of the work behind the scenes.
	The United Kingdom is the world leader in health and safety, but we must always strive to do better. I hope that this short Bill will play its part in that endeavour. Its purposes are clear—to punish the criminally negligent who put life and limb in danger in the workplace, to deter those who are tempted to cut costs by breaking the health and safety law, and to render faster and more efficient justice. The Bill seeks to do all that with no new regulatory requirements or new compliance costs in any sector, and I commend it to the House.

Andrew Dismore: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It relates to the duties under section 7 of the 1974 Act, to which I hope to refer shortly, and how we should approach employees who misbehave. As I said earlier, we should examine the system of work that might put an employee in the position of having to cut corners. As the hon. Gentleman says, some people might behave in that way because they want to skive off early, but some might be put under pressure through a system of work that requires them to cut corners. The best example of that is white van man, who is often given impossible delivery schedules and ends up speeding and having road accidents because he is driving negligently or is too tired. A serious flaw in the operation of the Health and Safety Executive is that it does not—or did not until recently—consider such road accidents to be accidents at work. I think it has recently changed its policy, but there is still an awfully long way to go in terms of how those accidents are recorded and investigated. The HSE still sees them primarily as being a matter for the police to investigate, and may start to investigate only when a major system flaw is found. It has not always seen them as being a major priority.
	We have to look at the other side of the coin. If someone is issued with goggles and told time and again to put them on but does not do so because they find them uncomfortable, that is significant. However, even those cases prompt the question why the employer has not taken disciplinary action. In the end, even if the employee is 90 per cent. at fault, the employer still bears some responsibility for having not ensured that the rules are properly enforced. They cannot entirely abnegate their responsibility for what happens on building sites, in factories or at other workplaces under their control. There is always a reason why these things happen. It may be a result of cutting corners; it may be because of how the wages are calculated—piece rate, job and finish or whatever. All those things are part of the systems that can lead to the taking of shortcuts and, therefore, health and safety risks. On the face of it, it may look as if it is clearly the employee's fault, but we sometimes need to delve a little deeper.
	Let me return to the responsibility of directors. We need to consider how we can make directors personally liable for some of the things that happen in the name of their company. At the moment, if a fine is imposed, even an unlimited fine, it will merely be passed on to the company's shareholders by being paid out of the potential profits, which may be a little lower, with the result that the shareholders lose out. The shareholders, who have no control, de facto, over what is happening, end up paying the penalty, while the directors escape scot-free. I hope that as the Bill progresses we can see some progress in this respect, and if not in this Bill then in future legislation.
	The real goal of the Bill is to embed a health and safety culture in every workplace in the country. It is inequitable if some workers are placed at risk by the negligence or carelessness of their employers. Contrary to many press reports, health and safety is one of the hallmarks of a civilised and cohesive society where every person looks after the safety and welfare of their fellow citizens. As my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley said, the 1974 Act imposes not just duties in the workplace but, under section 6, duties on those who employ people, and it extends to the wider general public as well. If somebody is injured as a result of activities on a construction site—the proverbial person walking in the street who has a 2-tonne weight land on them and squash them—the employer will potentially be liable for a breach under the Act, if a prosecution follows.
	The new penalties are not only about protecting employees in the workplace but protecting the contractor in the workplace and, more importantly, they are a vital protection for the general public. We have seen that in some of the prosecutions to do with train crashes. There has always been an argument about whether, in those cases, prosecutions should have been brought for corporate manslaughter. I am pleased that we now have the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, which could well provide the answer to that. Families were concerned that when prosecutions were brought under the 1974 Act, the penalties imposed might have been very large—fines in excess of £1 million in relation to the Ladbroke Grove train crash—but the directors did not face personal liability. That is one of the flaws, which I pointed out on several occasions during its passage, of the 2007 Act. However, we are considering an important measure tonight— [Interruption.] It may be tonight by the time I have finished.
	To achieve the full benefits of the approach that we are considering, there must be a cultural shift in the workplace. Health and safety must become central to the way businesses are run, and businesses must accept that any breach of those laws rightly results in sanctions—severe sanctions if necessary.

Andrew Dismore: My hon. Friend says that it can be different in common law. I am not entirely sure whether I understand his point, but if he is talking about compensation claims—

Andrew Dismore: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I would simply say that I understand now what my hon. Friend is talking about: it is vicarious liability for the negligence of an employee. You are right, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that that strays a little far from the Bill, because the Bill is about the criminal side of health and safety, whereas my hon. Friend's intervention was about the civil compensation side, which is a separate issue. One of the general failings of the 1974 Act is that we cannot bring civil cases based on the obligations under it. That is a digression, however, and we must now return to the detail of the Bill.
	A useful comparison can be drawn with the level of fines for breaches of financial law and regulations. The Financial Services Authority is the regulator that performs a similar role in the financial sphere to the HSE in health and safety. In 2006-07, the average fine imposed by the FSA was £232,000 and the average fine for the five years to the end of 2006 was £712,000. Two recently reported cases demonstrate the discrepancy I wish to highlight. On 16 January this year, the FSA fined HFC Bank Ltd £1.085 million for failing to take reasonable care to ensure that the advice it gave to customers to buy payment protection insurance was suitable. On 20 January—four days later—Asda was fined a mere £225,000, less than a quarter of the earlier amount, after a customer was killed by a car park barrier that smashed through his windscreen. That highlights the disparity in how our enforcement system in this country works. How can it be right that someone being killed by a car park barrier falling through his windscreen is worth less than the negligence—or improper advice, rather—given by a bank to its customers and it not taking reasonable care?
	I hope that one of the consequences of the Bill will be that we see a bit more of a level playing field between these financial regulatory offences and health and safety regulatory offences. I do not deny that serious financial offences should be punished accordingly, and be subject to significantly higher fines, but it is the glaring difference between the level of fines that causes most concern. Breaches of health and safety often lead to death and serious injury and cause great distress to the person concerned and their family, and that must be reflected in the sanctions imposed on the negligent party, which is what the Bill provides for.
	It is one of the guiding principles of the British justice system that victims of negligence should receive appropriate redress for the wrong that has been done to them. This is not just a question of natural justice. Many families involved in health and safety cases are more concerned that similar events do not befall other innocent people. That is an important factor. We recently talked about inquests, and one of the key issues in terms of that is that people want to know not necessarily that they will get compensation, but that steps will be taken to ensure that the same thing does not happen again to some other unfortunate person or family. The additional penalties that provide the deterrent effect in the Bill—and, if there is a prosecution, that lead to widespread publicity and the naming and shaming of the company or employer involved—can only help to send a message to the whole of society that breaches of health and safety will not be tolerated and, it is to be hoped, that lessons will be learned when offences occur. The point is that the measure will, I hope, at long last start to make it more expensive not to adopt health and safety measures than to adopt them, which is the problem that we now experience.
	Of course, it is all very well our legislating in this way, but ultimately, enforcement is a matter for the courts. The penalty is a matter for the judge or the magistrate. Instrumental was the fact that it was previously acknowledged by the courts, the Government and the HSE itself that fines for breaches of health and safety laws and regulations are too low. Judicial support for this view came in the case of the Crown  v. Howe & Son (Engineers) Ltd in 1999. The judge said:
	"The objective of prosecutions for health and safety offences in the work place is to achieve a safe environment for those who work there and for other members of the public who may be affected. A fine needs to be large enough to bring that message home where that defendant is a company not only to those who manage it but also to its shareholders."
	So there is some judicial support for the suggestion that fines are not as high as they could and should be. I therefore hope that we will see judges taking on board the new powers that the Bill will provide, assuming that it becomes law.
	The Health and Safety Commission itself, in its response to the draft Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill, said:
	"Before looking at new penalties there is a need to ensure the level of fines imposed under current penalties act as an effective deterrent: current levels are too low".
	That is the point: at the moment the courts are not imposing the penalties that they could within the powers that they have. The maximum is £20,000 and as I said earlier, if we take out the very big cases, that is about half what they should be fining. Let us hope that the House is sending a clear message to the courts today that we are not satisfied with the level of fines being imposed, that we are giving them the discretion to impose much higher penalties, and that they should use those powers much more vigorously when they convict somebody and the penalty is imposed.
	I very much welcome my right hon. Friend's Bill. In introducing it, he has done a service not just to the House but to every single working person in the country by hopefully making their place of work a little safer and their employers take safety a little more seriously. I welcome my right hon. Friend's initiative and I, for one, think that this Bill has enormous merit.

Denis MacShane: In the last weekend of Easter, there is always a very moving ceremony outside the Minster in Rotherham, the parish church, at which the vicar of Rotherham—together, usually, with a Muslim imam—gathers with workers and trade unionists to lay wreaths to commemorate all the people who died in workplace accidents in the past year in Britain. Workers' memorial day has grown from being a very small event into quite a large gathering. The Bill of my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Keith Hill), which is achieving its Third Reading with all-party support, will be warmly welcomed by employees and workers in Rotherham.
	I am of course conscious that my right hon. Friend has a distinguished trade union background, serving the railway workers of Britain in particular before entering this House. It worries me slightly that the same number of people with such background and experience are no longer to be seen on the Benches of either side of this House. It is important that the difficulties that employees and workers face be adequately reflected in this our House of Commons.
	As the MP for Rotherham—for that great steel, engineering and mining town—I am of course extremely conscious of the devastating toll that workplace accidents still take on the lives of people in my constituency and in the whole of south Yorkshire. I could regale you with stories of some of the major workplace accidents that have taken place in Rotherham, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I suspect that you would not allow me to do so. I strongly commend a marvellous new book called "Black Gold", which is about the Fitzwilliam family, who owned much of the land and the mines of Rotherham. They were actually a very progressive and socially conscious family. On a visit to Rotherham, King George V became the first monarch ever to descend down a mine. Everything was set up and carefully prepared for him. A day or two before that happened, there was a terrible mining accident, which shocked the whole community, but the King still went to greet the miners. I think that he understood from that moment some of the real difficulties faced by working people in Britain, of which the Governments of the day, whose representatives came principally only from what one might call the bourgeois, employer or capitalist class, had no idea.
	It is important that the House acknowledges that far too many people still die or are seriously injured at work in our country—according to the latest available figures, 241 people were killed and 28,267 were injured in the workplace in 2006-07. That death toll is extraordinary. We rightly draw to the House's attention the death of any one of our public servants—our brave military in Afghanistan, our police officers or our fire officers—when they give up their lives for us in the course of their duty, but we rarely hear mention at the Dispatch Box of anyone who has lost their life simply because we are not able to alter our mentality to prevent preventable accidents. The Bill promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham is an important step forward in that direction.
	I shall not adumbrate the Government's efforts in the past 11 years to help the working people of Britain, which started with the minimum wage and the signing of the social chapter, and continued with last week's agreement, thanks to a good example of working social partnership between the CBI and the TUC, on the agency workers question. It was endorsed by the European Council after 15 hours of long negotiation by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs.
	I was disappointed to hear the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) attack that deal, saying that it was about a Government getting on the backs of employers. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), all of whose contributions to this debate I have read carefully, has been very supportive of the Bill promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham and of the Government's support for it. We need to place on record the fact that were there to be a change of Government, the workers of Britain would need to watch out—we have already heard the language of withdrawing from the social charter obligations of Europe and altering the strike law in this country. There is no doubt that the men of immense wealth who sit in the shadow Cabinet and represent the Conservative party have no real care for the broader interests of Britain's working people. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire is put up to support this Bill, and we welcome his presence, although he is, of course, alone in the House with a string of Labour MPs.

Christopher Chope: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	I count myself fortunate to have any time at all to debate a Bill on a Friday that I have drafted, or which has been drafted, with minimal assistance from me, by officials of the House, who have also given me guidance, for which I am eternally grateful. It is relatively unusual to have a Presentation Bill debated in the House in this Session.
	The reason I asked to put the previous Bill back to next Friday is that I already have a Bill dealing with the European Union on the Order Paper for that day, so I thought that I should regard today as providing an important opportunity to talk about an equally significant issue for our constituents and citizens—namely, road traffic congestion reduction.
	Earlier this week, I was privileged to attend a dinner in Wandsworth town hall to celebrate 30 continuous years of Conservative control in Wandsworth. During the course of that dinner, the former MP for Henley gave us an updated version of part of the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which he felt moved to provide because we were in the presence of Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. The former MP for Henley thus said:
	"Where there is congestion, let there be free flowing traffic".
	That is very much the theme of the Bill.

Christopher Chope: My right hon. Friend makes a point that could be dealt with in a separate Bill. I am grateful to him for supporting my Bill on the basis of its long title. If it gets into Committee, there will be every opportunity, within the scope of the long title, to deal with some of my right hon. Friend's concerns.
	Let me explain briefly what the Bill is designed to achieve. It will
	"Place a duty on highway authorities and police forces to minimise congestion and delays caused by collisions and other incidents on the highway".
	It will do so by changing the duties of local traffic authorities under the Traffic Management Act 2004 to include a requirement on the network management organisation to minimise
	"congestion on the authority's road network",
	to take
	"action to remove expeditiously obstructions caused by collisions"
	and to establish
	"contingency plans to ensure that traffic is directed to alternative routes when roads are temporarily closed or obstructed".
	Clause 1(4) also requires information to be provided. It stipulates that
	"a local traffic authority should publish, on an annual basis, information regarding closures or partial closures of roads in excess of a specified duration, including details of...the duration and cause, and...the action taken to minimise the duration of such closures."
	Hon. Members will be aware that recent years have seen an increasing number of total closures of motorways, trunk roads and other highways by the authorities following collisions and other incidents. The duration of those closures has increased significantly. I have tabled written parliamentary questions, the responses to which have been depressing reading for the travelling public.
	Clause 2 places a duty on police authorities "to minimise congestion" by requiring such an authority to
	"include in its local policing plan a requirement that, in attending collisions and other incidents on roads, the police should, so far as is reasonably practicable, minimise any congestion and delay for road users and, in particular, only close a road as a last resort and for as short a period as possible."
	If anyone is in any doubt about the relevance and topicality of the Bill, perhaps they will change their mind when they hear about an incident in my constituency reported on the Transport Direct website this morning. In the "Live travel news" section, which I last checked at 9.38 am during a Division, there were severe delays on the A31 eastbound at Ringwood road because the road was closed between Ashley Heath junction and the M27 Butchers Bush junction for accident investigation work. That closure began at 5.24 am, and it was still in force at 9.38 am, when the rush hour was over. I am delighted to see that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick) seems to be expressing surprise and dismay that such a thing has happened. Let me tell him that that is just one incident today in my constituency. I do not know whether it has yet been resolved. The delay was not due to the accident itself, but accident investigation work. Surely there must be a better way of dealing with accident investigation work than closing important arteries and forcing the travelling public to take alternative routes.

Christopher Chope: Absolutely; I agree with my right hon. Friend. Indeed, the Highways Agency is talking about doing just that. I have with me its latest annual report, published last July. I imagine that the next one will be published next month. There are paragraphs on journey reliability, an important objective for the Highways Agency; perhaps the Minister can talk to us about that later. The report contains a statement about the agency
	"putting additional measures in place to tackle unreliable journeys, including...trials of collision investigation equipment to speed up accident investigations".
	I do not know whether one of those trials was taking place on the A31 this morning; I hope not. The travelling public in my constituency would probably have been much better off if such investigation equipment had been available this morning to prevent those unwarranted delays.
	A scan of my local newspapers shows that the A338, which goes from the Ashley Heath roundabout to Bournemouth through my constituency, has been blocked completely on several occasions in recent months, not just for 10 minutes or half an hour, but for hours at a time. Traffic has been blocked solid on that road because there is no way of moving off it. In those situations, there is a strong case for the highways authorities providing alternative routes. That may mean opening up emergency exit areas that might normally be accessed by the police and emergency services only. On the A338, that would make it possible for some of the traffic to go elsewhere. Otherwise, if traffic builds up—often there are many miles of delays—the frustration for the travelling public, the cost to the Exchequer and other problems are disproportionate.
	Let me offer a press report as an example. It stated that a crash had caused 10-mile delays on the M6, and that Lancashire police had said that a Land Rover Freelander had overturned between junctions 34 at Lancaster and 35 at Carnforth, spilling fuel on to two lanes. That was not, therefore, a fatal accident; instead, a relatively modest-sized vehicle—a Land Rover Freelander, not a great lorry carrying fuel—had, as a result of an accident, spilled fuel on to two lanes of the carriageway, and those lanes were then closed and the result was delays of 10 miles. Three lanes of 10-mile delays is equivalent to 30 miles of queuing traffic, and that was caused by a Land Rover Freelander with a split in its—diesel, I imagine—tank. That is a disproportionate consequence of such an incident. We must be able to find a better way, through the police and the highway authorities, to prevent the travelling public from being inconvenienced to such an extent.
	The climate in terms of such incidents has changed so much over recent years that motorists almost feel that the authorities are trying to penalise the motoring public for the actions of fellow drivers that result in collisions—or, as they are now increasingly called, incidents. Why should people be penalised in this way? Last year marked the centenary of the scouts, and I remember that I was due to go to an event west from my constituency in Dorset, but the entire road network for tens of miles was completely clogged up because of an accident. It seems that the level of priority that the police, the Highways Agency and the highways authorities give to clearing such accidents and removing the debris is not as great as it should be.
	I received some comfort from looking at a couple of the route management strategies that are being established. The A2/M2 and A249 route management strategy—drawn up, I think, jointly by Babtie Group Ltd, now Jacobs, and the HA—puts near the top of the strategy matters such as delay minimisation, provision of real-time information, installation of electronic signing, improved performance in respect of accident clearance and provision of emergency access between junctions 5 and 6 of that motorway. It makes it clear that there should be an objective of reducing not only the number of accidents, but the impact of the delays caused by those accidents.
	However, the statistics in the HA annual report reveal a sad story in respect of the target of increasing journey reliability—of improving reliability to ensure that average vehicle delay on the 10 per cent. slowest journeys is less in 2007-08 than in the baseline period of August 2004 to July 2005. Monitoring of that up to the end of March 2007 showed a slippage of about 8.7 per cent. against the target—in other words, things were going in the wrong direction. The HA report states that that
	"appears to be related to a higher impact of traffic growth than originally anticipated."
	I do not think that that is good enough, and I do not think the HA thinks it is good enough either. My Bill would make it clear to the HA and the police authorities that they would have a statutory duty to act in this respect, rather than just using such good endeavours as they might think appropriate at any particular time.
	Policing and traffic management are, as in so many other walks of life, issues of priority: to what extent should priority be given to a particular activity? On too many occasions, the police and the highways authority do not give sufficient priority to clearing the roads and allowing free-flowing traffic.

Greg Knight: My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way again. He referred to his wish to put a statutory duty on highways authorities and the police to ensure that congestion be dealt with as soon as possible, but his Bill is silent on this point. Should his Bill become law, what would happen if a highway authority was clearly in flagrant breach of that duty? Would a motorist stranded in a traffic jam that was totally avoidable be able to sue the highways authority for compensation, particularly if they were a business man who had suffered losses due to missing an important meeting?

Robert Goodwill: This is a good opportunity to explore some of the issues surrounding the Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), who, as a former transport Minister, possibly knows more about the subject than I do. It is a subject that cuts across Departments, including the Home Office. Matters such as policing, justice, and prosecution will need to be discussed in a cross-departmental way if we are to find a solution to the problem of congestion.
	The United Kingdom is in the premier league when it comes to motor accidents; we have one of the best records in the European Union. Nevertheless, more than 3,000 people are killed on our roads each year—seven or eight a day. The problem is caused by three specific groups: those who persistently drink and drive, the young, and those who continually speed.
	The motorways are our safest roads. According to figures adjusted for traffic volume, 13 of the 20 safest roads in the UK are motorways, despite the speeds at which people travel on them. Some of our rural A roads are dozens of times more dangerous, particularly single-carriageway roads on which motorists are often tempted to overtake slow-moving lorries and, as a result, are involved in one of the worst types of accident: head-on collisions.
	As I am sure the Minister knows, my party's policy is to increase the speed limit for large goods vehicles on some A roads from 40 to 50 mph, in an attempt to avoid the frustration that sometimes causes motorists to overtake in dangerous places. I have yet to meet a police officer who does not agree with me that that would be a major step towards improving safety on our roads. In fact, many lorries on A roads—I saw one the other day, a Sainsbury's lorry—carry apologies on the back, explaining to motorists that they must travel at 40 mph because of the national speed limit.
	The worst road in the United Kingdom is the A889, which wends its way through the Scottish highlands. It has 14 times the average accident rate of other roads in the country. We must bear in mind—this is particularly relevant to the Bill—that when we close a motorway or major route because of what has to be called an incident, we are diverting traffic on to more dangerous roads. When there are accidents on those other roads it is less of a problem, because vast volumes of traffic are not diverted.
	When accidents occur on roads, particularly fatal accidents, the emergency services have three vital roles. First, they must clear away debris and the vehicles involved in the accident. A major problem is fuel spillage. My hon. Friend mentioned a Land Rover Discovery. It is particularly difficult to remove diesel from the carriageway, and anyone who has ridden a motorcycle—as I used to in my younger days—will know that diesel and water on a road constitute probably the most dangerous cocktail that can be encountered.
	Secondly, the emergency services need to carry out barrier repairs if the central reservation has been damaged. I know that the Government are convinced of the argument for replacing steel barriers with concrete barriers. They are not only much more effective at preventing crossover accidents, but do not need the repairs that one reads about—sometimes 200 m or 300 m of central barrier has been damaged by a crossover accident. Does the Minister have any plans to step up the speed at which those steel barriers can be replaced with concrete? The case is compelling, and the only restraint is financial.
	The third role of the emergency services is the police investigation, which is where the greatest streamlining potential exists. Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to read the Association of Chief Police Officers road deaths investigation manual. I was going to print it off and bring it with me, but it extends to 110 pages, so I thought it would be environmentally unfriendly to do so. In effect, the manual likens the investigation following an accident to a murder investigation. It says that one should never assume that it is just an accident and that it could be a case of motor manslaughter or even of suicide. That is why we see fingertip searches of motorways, the collection of statements and all the technical work that must be done following an accident, meaning that the motorways are often closed for a protracted period.
	There have been some technological advances. We now have laser theodolites, which means that the investigating officers can use remote control to take the necessary measurements following an accident and that the information can be downloaded to a computer when they get back to the office. The manual makes it very clear that once traffic starts using the road again, the scene is compromised. The police, when carrying out any investigation, whether criminal or following a road incident, must bear in mind three important points. First, is their action illegal? Secondly, is it proportionate? And thirdly, is it necessary? On the second point, the police are sometimes a little disproportionate because of the pressure brought to bear on them from other directions, such as the legal side rather than the traffic management side. Of course, the police will always err on the side of caution, given that defence barristers—should a prosecution ensue—may try to make out that the police were incompetent or lazy in not carrying out the fullest of investigations.
	One problem is that the decision to open the road is made by the senior investigating officer on the ground, and he is not always aware of the wider picture, such as the congestion further afield. The police also do not look at the likelihood of securing a prosecution; in every case, the evidence is collected in a detailed way no matter what.
	A while ago, there was an incident in my constituency during the Oliver's mount road races, which take place on what is normally a public road. Following an unfortunate fatal accident, the police officer in charge intended to close the entire race meeting for the day. Fortunately, good sense prevailed and the argument was made that, because the competitors were racing under Auto-Cycle Union rules, such action was unnecessary. Unfortunately, when there is a fatality, all too often the default position is to close the road—and to do so for a long time. There is a knock-on effect: if the A1 is closed in Lincolnshire, for example, a lot of traffic goes on to the A15 through Lincoln; and if the A1 is closed in north Yorkshire, the traffic all goes through Selby. They are dangerous roads with many pedestrians, and the knock-on effects and potential hazards to people are not borne in mind.
	There may be a case for looking at whether the decision should be removed to one stage higher, so that the duty superintendent or chief superintendent with force command considers when to open the road.  The Northern Echo, reporting a case in October 2005, said:
	"A fatal road accident closed a motorway for 16 hours yesterday causing chaos for motorists.
	One man was"—
	sadly—
	"declared dead at the scene of the multi-vehicle pile-up on the A1(M) northbound, just north of Wetherby, in West Yorkshire."
	It continued:
	"the spokesman for North Yorkshire police, said: 'Pictures, measurements and large amounts of technical detail have been taken down. Statements will be taken from witnesses and all this information will be pulled together to make a picture of what happened. It's going to be a very hard job—made all the more difficult because this is one of the region's main highways.'
	The northbound carriageway remained closed until about 2.40pm yesterday".
	It noted that many serious tailbacks occurred for many miles and that motorists were criticised for ignoring diversions and finding other routes around the accident through villages and small roads. I guess that with the advent of satellite navigation motorists are keener to try to explore alternative routes. It went on to say that there were reports of delays and congestion on the A64 and the A59 and heavy traffic around Thirsk and Northallerton. The knock-on effects of closing a motorway are very serious and have an impact on road safety in local communities.
	I should like to pull out a couple of points from the ACPO manual, which sometimes puts the police in a straitjacket and does not allow them any real degree of discretion in the way that they investigate such crimes—if they are crimes. It says:
	"Managing the potential for contamination should be a priority for all fatal collision investigations".
	It goes on:
	"Although the closure of roads is likely to cause disruption the Senior Investigating Officer should withstand pressure from others to release the scene (eg reopen roads) prematurely. The investigation should in all cases take precedence over the need to reopen roads."
	In every case where there is fatality or serious injury, the police go to the extent of investigating and collecting evidence as prescribed in the manual. Can the Minister tell us in what proportion of fatal accidents the motorist is deemed to be at fault, resulting in a prosecution?
	What analysis has been made of the risk involved in closing motorways for protracted periods? Following the Hatfield rail disaster, where cracked rails caused a serious rail crash, as a precaution the railway authorities—I am sure that the Department for Transport was involved—closed down most of the inter-city rail network for a period and then reopened certain sections, as they could, and imposed speed limits. A risk assessment would have been made of the likelihood of another rail crash, but none was made of the tens of thousands of additional car journeys that occurred because of the closure of the rail network. The problem, from a purely political point of view, was that if another rail crash had occurred the Minister or his Secretary of State would have been blamed, but there was no one to blame for the dozens of road accidents that were a direct result of that closure.
	I hope that the Minister will have time to answer those points and that the Bill will be allowed to proceed into Committee, where there would be a tremendous opportunity to improve it and to consider some of the wider aspects described by my right hon. and hon. Friends.